Month: January 2019

The Black Dogs have been standing on the edge of a cesspit, walls crawling with maggots, and flies swarming around since our last session towards the end of 2018. Human waste rains down nearby from a shaft leading to a toilet and entrance into the Burgerfriedensmiliz HeadQuarter… all they have to do is ascend the shit covered shaft.

Waiting until all is quiet above Genevieve casts Levitate on Ingrid, and the fighter, carrying her sword and a crowbar with rope attached ascends the shaft…. into total darkness as there are no lamps above. After a moment Ingrid’s head hits a wooden board, a large piece of wood with two holes cut into it serving as toilet seats. Trying to push the board to one side so she can get into the room, Ingrid ends up covered in faeces… not a nice look for anyone! With the board out of the way, Ingrid floats to the ceiling of the room and scrambles around, eventually calling to Genevieve to lower her to the floor and release the spell. Fumbling in the darkness, Ingrid secures the crowbar across the opening left by the wooden panel and drops the rope down the shaft, and one by one the Black Dogs climb into the room.

First to arrive is Hemming who is able to see the room more clearly; a large oval room with the aforementioned toilet, buckets for peeing in and bowls, water and rags for cleaning up. A bolt on the inside of the door is shut by the Magic-User as other party members climb up the rope, some finding it easier than others.

At this stage the party don’t know that the HQ is fairly well populated, and it is no surprise to me at least that a cultist needs the loo… finding the door locked he starts asking to come in as he shouts (and I’m paraphrasing here!) “I’m bursting, open up!”. Hemming comes up with a clever ploy to lure him in and murder him which they easily do… with the rest of the party now in the room, the body is dumped down the shaft.

Much discussion follows a quick inspection of the corridor outside… a dark corridor leads east and west (it seems there are no torches or lanterns on the walls, everyone carries their own lantern), and ahead is what appears to be a refectory… and quite a number of seemingly ordinary men, women and children are at tables eating delicious steaks and veggies. The aroma of meat cooking makes the PC’s stomachs rumble as they realise how hungry they are. The discussion is around a plan… one plan is sneak around, see what’s what; another plan is to wait for people to come to the toilet, kill them and throw their bodies down the shaft.

While they are deciding what to do, there is another knock on the door, and the same plan is put into action – let them come in, kill and dump them. Hemmings ploy is working; while the other party members hide out of sight, the unsuspecting cultists walk into the toilet. Balock and Miklos attack with ranged weapons while the others pile in; three of the cultists are effectively sliced and diced in a surprise attack, but the fourth survives and wins initiative for the next round… oh no, this is bad! The cultists runs into the refectory across the hall screaming “Alarm, intruders!”.

Options are limited; it would take too long for all the Black Dogs to climb back down the shaft, so the adventurers decide to run down one dark corridor in the base. As they flee at least half a dozen cultists come running after them, shouting for their blood (most are unarmed but still look ready for business)… while others may be running to alert futher cultists or cut them off… who knows (not me, hehe)?

Running ahead, chased by cultists, their lantern lighting only a short way ahead, the PC’s turn a corner… could this passageway lead to an entrance and safety, or on towards their deaths? They flee down the corridor and come to a junction – the passageway splits, with what appears to be a room ahead and a further room to their right, a room in which they can just make out the edges of stone benches.

Chased by cultists, the headquarters probably on alert the Black Dogs are in a tricky situation… will they survive the next session?

@theGROGNARDfile has asked me to host the Grogmeet Friday OSR session at Grogmeet 2019 – a great honour indeed! As Grognards have already been talking about this kind of thing on Twitter, I emailed Dirk with some ideas – these are my initial thoughts and will no doubt go through changes before the event. I’m looking for feedback, ideas, preferences and ultimately will need some GM’s for tables. I may take a back seat with GMing on this one and do the organiser and ‘table runner’ role that I think was missing at Grogfight last year.

I’ve got 3 ideas for Grogfringe at the moment. I’m aiming for table interaction and hopefully a bit of an ice breaker. In the order that I prefer them:

Aliens!

All tables use the same rules (something like the free Mothership rules). Adventure starts with the PC’s coming out of cryosleep, alarms blaring, red lights flashing. While they’re dazed and confused a bossy Sergeant tells them the ship has been attacked by aliens and they need to get to escape pods – he puts them into teams which must make their own way there (one team per table). There are other options though; they could head to the armoury and try to take on the aliens, or try to get to the comms room to call in support….

Each team with have three comms links – one for each of the other teams. They can use them to talk to another team for up to one minute. There is a 1 in 3 chance of the comms unit failing after that and they can no longer contact that team. Could either have players going to other tables or use GM mobile phones for more realism…

Would be good to have a full schematic of the ship as they would have some knowledge of the layout etc. Could also put this on a board to track each teams movements.

If a PC dies they move to another table, but this time as a new character, someone that team has come across as they try to escape the ship.

Globetrotting Pulp Adventure

Using different pulp systems (Daredevils, Justice Inc, Pulp Cthulhu..), each table/team is from a Caduceus like operation trying to foil Evil Corp (traditional pulp baddies). Teams uncover clues in New York, Paris, London, Berlin that lead them on 4 separate missions in exotic locations. At each they must all foil the plans of Evil Corp to save the world.

Table interaction could be through telegrams (short hand written notes) that can only be sent and received at certain points.

Deathtrap Dungeon

Using the same rules (maybe B/X D&D) each party is a pre-formed adventuring group ready to take on this lethal dungeon. They are all playing in the same dungeon. First to the prize wins. Would have a board showing progress of each team… they get points for achieving goals, or have penalties for losing party members (which are not killed but knocked out, slowing them down). Those furthest through the dungeon could set traps for those that follow (maybe!).

I’m not sure on the table interaction on this one… would need further thought.
I’d like to keep tables more self contained and minimise table swapping – I reckon players would want to stay on the table they begin with for the main part. I’d also like to reduce the amount of prep on GM’s by having maps good to go (use something like this https://wizardawn.and-mag.com/tool_smap.php), just need a few encounters adding.

Some of this was based on conversations on Twitter immediately after Grogmeet. There was a Pulp thread with @DissectingWrlds, @KiernanEd, @thedicemechanic and others, some fantastic ideas – although I do have my reservations about multiple systems after last year. @dimbyd had suggested using the original Tomb of Horror competition module for this – that could be a great one for a Deathtrap Dungeon option.

Let me know what you think, what you would prefer, any problems you can see – any feedback or ideas at all – on Twitter/MeWe would be fine, but if you post your comments here it’ll be easier to refer back to in the future.